The United States Of Disrepair
Yesterday, I left my apartment on the northwest side of Chicago to visit my parents for Mother’s Day. Needless to say, the thirty minute trip to their home turned into a game of “Avoid the Pothole.” Granted, conditions were particularly bad this past winter. However, having driven for almost two decades now, I can’t recall the last time roads and other infrastructure around Chicagoland were ever this bad.
“Dude, where’s my car?”
Well, earlier today I came across a piece by David Edwards for the alternative news site The Raw Story (hat tip, What Really Happened) that shed some light on the situation in Chicago, and across the United States, for that matter. In “CBS: America’s infrastructure is crumbling,” the associate editor talked about “America in Disrepair,” which was shown on the CBS Early Show on May 10. Edwards wrote:
Unless more funding and effort are put into saving the nation’s infrastructure, it will continue to crumble, say experts. An estimated $1.5 trillion over the next five years could be needed to avoid large-scale disaster.
“When infrastructure declines, we’re going to become a second-rate country,” says engineer and former New York City transportation commissioner “Gridlock Sam” Schwartz.
You can view the 5 minute 45 second CBS broadcast here.
Source:
“CBS: America’s infrastructure is crumbling”
David Edwards
The Raw Story, May 11, 2008
May 13th, 2008 at 8:26 am
Well, when your federal budget deficit for 2008 will probably run $1 trillion and the war to make the rich richer on oil, another $1 trillion who has money for road replair? What a mess! We’re in deep trouble here……………
May 13th, 2008 at 11:07 pm
Thanks for the comment Anon. I’ve always been perturbed by the fact that while we send billions of dollars overseas to our “friends,” we desperately need the money here to repair infrastructure, among other things. America first, baby (at least, in this case).